Disciplining Freedom

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Disciplining Freedom

Treatment Dilemmas and Subjectivity at a

Detention Home for Young Men

Anna Gradin Franzén

Linköping Studies in Arts and Science No. 617 Linköping Studies in Behavioural Science No. 184

Linköping University, Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning Linköping 2014

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Linköping Studies in Arts and Science  No. 617 Linköping Studies in Behavioural Science No. 184

At the Faculty of Arts and Science at Linköping University, research and doctoral studies are carried out within broad problem areas. Research is organized in interdisciplinary research environments and doctoral studies mainly in graduate schools. Jointly, they publish the series Linköping Studies in Arts and Science. This thesis comes from the Division of Psychology at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning.

Distributed by:

Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning Linköping University

581 83 Linköping

Anna Gradin Franzén Disciplining Freedom

Treatment Dilemmas and Subjectivity at a Detention Home for Young Men Edition 1:1 ISBN 978-‐‑91-‐‑7519-‐‑344-‐‑1 ISSN 0282-‐‑9800 ISSN 1654-‐‑2029

©Anna Gradin Franzén

Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning 2014

Printed by: LiU-‐‑tryck, Linköping 2014

Cover design: Robin Portnoff

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V

ITT

LIST

OF

PAPERS

This dissertation is based on the following papers, which are referred to in the text by their Roman numerals:

I Gradin Franzén, A., & Holmqvist, R. (submitted). From punishment to rewards? Treatment dilemmas at a youth detention home.

II Gradin Franzén, A., & Aronsson, K. (2013). Teasing, laughing, and disciplinary humor: Staff–youth interaction in detention home treatment. Discourse Studies, 15(29), 167-183.

III Gradin Franzén, A. (2014). Responsibilization and discipline: Subject positioning at a youth detention home. Journal of Contemporary

Ethnography. OnlineFirst. Doi: 10.1177/0891241613520455.

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Gör vit

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When I started this journey of writing a dissertation I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into. I believe that might have been a good thing. The road to a PhD runs through valleys and mountains. From the valley floor all you can see are massive mountains surrounding you. But from the tops of mountains it feels like you are soaring. One thing that is absolutely clear is that it is impossible to make this kind of journey on your own. I am fortunate to have had many supporting people around to help me up the mountains and propelling me forward when I felt like I was flying.

First, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my two supervisors. Rolf Holmqvist, you believed in me enough to take me on, providing support, and introducing me to the research field. You have also been trusting enough and willing to encourage me to indulge in my specific theoretical and methodological interests and have inspired me to make this

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thesis my own – thank you! To Karin Aronsson: Thank you for taking me under your wing, for reading, commenting and discussing my work with endless enthusiasm. Your expertise and guidance have been invaluable.

I would also like to thank Lucas Gottzén, who was the first to introduce me to discourse studies and who has been generous with reading and commenting on my texts throughout my entire academic career. And thank you as well for an enlightening 50% seminar. Thank you, Viveka Adelswärd, for an encouraging, (calming!) and insightful 90% seminar. And, thank you, Karin Osvaldsson, for valuable comments on my dissertation and individual articles at the SiS-seminar in spring 2013.

This study could never have happened if it was not for the staff members and residents of the detention home. I am deeply grateful that they allowed me to take part of their everyday lives for a considerable period of time and put up with my following along with video camera and notepad. Furthermore, this work was made possible by the generous funding from Statens institutionsstyrelse (SiS), the Sven Jerring Foundation, and Majblomman.

During my time as a PhD-student, I have been lucky enough to have two academic “homes”. At the Division of Psychology at Linköping University, I would particularly like to thank Rolf’s research group, who have always welcomed me and taken an interest in my work. In particular I would like to thank Clara Möller and Mattias Holmqvist, with whom I conducted fieldwork for the prison study, which has run in parallel with my dissertation project. Also, thank you Jenny Gleisner and Johan Linander for opening up your home whenever I needed a place to stay in Linköping.

I have also had the good fortune to be welcomed at the Department of Child and Youth Studies (BUV) at Stockholm University. BUV, led by Ann-Christin Cederborg, has enabled me to participate in a rich academic environment on a daily basis. It has surrounded me with outstanding colleagues to both discuss my work with and to help take my mind off of it, at times; thank you to everyone! I would also like to especially thank Mats Börjesson, Ingrid Engdahl, Rickard Jonsson, David Payne, and Camilla

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Rindstedt who have taken much time to participate in data sessions and seminars, and to read and discuss my work.

BUV has also provided me with a, now very large, group of PhD-student colleagues to share the pleasures and difficulties of PhD-life with. A special thank you to those who have followed me from the very beginning of my journey, and who have participated in most of my data sessions, discussed my work and in general made the work more enjoyable through the years: Henrik Ingrids, Björn Sjöblom, Anna Åhlund and Ylva Ågren. I would also like to especially thank Johanna Lindholm, with whom I shared room during some of the first years. And not least: Anna Åhlund and Nadja Nieminen-Mänty… words fail me – thank you!

During this time I have also had the opportunity to be a part of the Discourse Seminar at BUV. I would like to thank Mats Börjesson and the regulars for fun and thought provoking data sessions: Karin Aronsson, Helena Blomberg, Annica Engström, Sara Erlandsson, Clara Iversen, Rickard Jonsson, Magnus Kilger, Nadja Nieminen-Mänty, David Redmalm, Björn Sjöblom, and Annika Skoglund.

I am also grateful to several people who have helped me in the final stages of writing and putting together the finished product of this dissertation: Sofia Frankenberg, thank you for reading and commenting my final manuscript, and also for providing support in general throughout these years. Thank you Björn Sjöblom and Laura Viñoles Marklund for helping me with the layout. Thank you Jenny Gleisner for sharing your knowledge in finishing a dissertation. Thank you Robin Portnoff for designing the cover. Thank you Anna Åhlund, for being willing to read and discuss any issue when I needed it.

To my friends outside of the university, thank you for giving me a break from the grind of dissertation, and for putting up with me even though, for quite some time, my most common response to any type of request or suggestion has been “it’s a little much right now”.

I would also like to thank my parents for always believing that I could do whatever I wanted to, and never doubting for a second that accomplishing a PhD would be any different. And thank you, brother, for always providing

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both support and challenging discussions. Thank you Saia, for helping me to stay put in front of the computer and to keep writing when I felt like escaping.

And finally, thank you Calvin. For cheering me on the whole way through, for being my personal dictionary and thesaurus, for adeptly handling the various side effects that come with writing a dissertation, and most of all, thank you for being there.

Solna, April 2014

Anna Gradin Franzén

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Chapter 1 YOUTH

DETENTION

HOMES

AS

PEOPLE-‐

CHANGING

INSTITUTIONS

This is a study of treatment practices at a detention home for young men in Sweden. It investigates the complex and dilemmatic setting a youth detention home constitutes as it is an institution that provides treatment or care for young men, mainly with a prior criminal history or drug problems, but in the form of forced care. The focus is on social interaction, particularly between the young residents and staff members. But it is also a study about identity, about “who people are to each other” including related notions of morality and normality (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006, p. 6). However, drawing on social constructionist and poststructuralist notions, identity will be conceptualized as something performative, multiple, and dynamic rather than internal, essential, or static.

Identity today can be understood as something far from personal, private, or hidden deep within, but rather something that “penetrates us from every

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angle” (Gubrium & Holstein, 2001, p. 2). Society is filled with institutions and practices aimed at self-change, not only institutions such as detention homes that attempt to force their subjects to self-change, but also in the form of, for instance, self-help books and magazines with “how-to” guides. This may be understood in terms of that the personal self is increasingly being deprivatized. Deprivatization happens in a complex “postmodern panorama of public sites of self-construction, whose venues diversely produce and manage personal identity […] where selves are regularly decentred from their inner recesses and recentered in institutional life” (Gubrium & Holstein, 2001, p. 2).

This dissertation focuses on identity and self-construction in a not very public place, more precisely a detention home, a forced-treatment institution for young men. Such a home is all about changing people; it is a type of people-changing institution—a total institution (Goffman, 1961). While self-construction is a topic that is formally public in this type institution, the everyday lives and practices of detention homes are generally less public to society. This is also mirrored in research as studies of youth detention homes in Sweden are relatively scarce and mainly focus on the development and evaluation of treatment methods (Gruber, 2013; for example, Andreassen, 2003; Holmqvist, 2008; Holmqvist, Hill, & Lang, 2007, 2009; Vinnerljung & Sallnäs, 2008; Westermark, Hansson, & Olsson, 2011). Few studies explore the everyday lives and practices of those working at or admitted to the detention homes (but see, for example, Andersson, 2008; Cromdal & Osvaldsson, 2012; Hill, 2005; Levin, 1998; Wästerfors, 2009b, 2011). This study can thus be understood as an attempt to open up “the black box” of the forced treatment of youths.

DETENTION HOMES AS INSTITUTIONS OF CARE AND CONTROL

Youth detention homes are particular social control institutions because of at least two interrelated aspects, namely, that they aim to provide forced treatment or care rather than punishment, and that they deal with children and youth rather than adults. Juvenile institutional care has a long history in Sweden. It may be said to, both historically and presently, be characterized

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by conflicting ideologies as they separate groups of youths from the rest of society with the dual intent of rehabilitating the youths as well as controlling them and protecting society from them (Andreassen, 2003; Levin, 1998; Sallnäs, 2000). Even though the rehabilitation or care ideology is strongly emphasized, for example, in that various psychological treatment methods are enforced, it can be argued that these institutions still function in somewhat controlling and punitive ways (Sallnäs, 2000; Levin, 1998). This may be understood as an inherent dilemma of care-control for these types of institutions (Överlien, 2004).

The names of these institutions have varied over time and include, for example, “protective homes” (Sw: skyddshem), reformatories (Sw:

uppfostringsanstalter), and reform schools (Sw: ungdomsvårdsskolor). Terms also

vary presently in public debate and scholarly literature, for instance, “residential treatment,” “homes,” and “juvenile centers” (Wästerfors, 2009b). Literally, the official Swedish term Särskilda ungdomshem can be translated as

Special youth homes. In this study, however, these institutions will mainly be

called detention homes, which is more in line with the terms used internationally. Still, it is difficult to find a term that reflects what type of institution it is, which in itself indicates the dilemmas surrounding these institutions and their practices.

Because detention homes intend to provide forced treatment rather than punishment, detained youth consequently do not receive a fixed sentence. By contrast, adult criminals, and Swedish youth between fifteen and seventeen who have committed serious crimes, are sentenced to fixed periods of incarceration, and released once they have served that sentence. The detention time for youth in forced treatment is instead determined in an ongoing manner in relation to the youth’s need for treatment and the deemed success (Levin, 1998).

This in turn relates to the second particular aspect of detention homes: it is an institution that admits youths, not adults. In Sweden, youths can be punished for crimes (Sw: straffmyndig) from the age of fifteen, but generally those under the age of eighteen are sentenced to compulsory youth treatment rather than prison. The emphasis on treatment/care rather than punishment

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follows from a notion that children should not be punished, but rather raised and cared for in state-run institutions. Through indefinite detention, the state is to prevent the young person growing up from becoming a criminal. This involves the institution caring for and socializing the young person (when the parents have failed) into becoming a normal and law-abiding adult (Levin, 1998).

As a social category, the term “child” often invokes a notion of innocence, vulnerability, and an individual in need of protection (Pufall & Unsworth, 2004). In cases where children have committed a crime of violence, this may cause confusion since it clashes with the image of the innocent child and dissolves the traditional binary between child and adult as social categories (Jenks, 2005). Historically, one way of solving this conundrum has been to remove children who commit violent crimes from the child category and instead conceive of them as either evil or pathological, thus being able to retain the notion of true or real children as innately innocent (Jenks, 2005). Further, it has been pointed out that issues concerning children often become moral issues (Meyer, 2007). Adolescents, however, can be understood as being placed somewhere in between childhood and adulthood, or as some kind of “quasi-child or crypto-adult,” yet a clearly distinguishable group in society (Jenks, 2005, p. 55). Similar to the child category, issues concerning adolescents often also become moral issues. Foucault (1977) spells out what distinguishes the youth delinquent from the adult offender:

The delinquent is to be distinguished from the offender by the fact that it is not so much his act as his life that is relevant in characterizing him. The penitentiary operation, if it is to be a genuine re-education, must become the sum total existence of the delinquent, making of the prison a sort of artificial and coercive theatre in which his life will be examined from top to bottom. The legal punishment bears upon an act; the punitive technique on a life; it falls to this punitive technique, therefore, to reconstitute all the sordid detail of a life in the form of knowledge, to fill in the gaps of that knowledge and to act upon it by a practice of compulsion. It is a biographical knowledge and a technique for correcting individual lives. (Foucault, 1977, pp. 251–252)

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Interventions targeted at correcting the youth delinquent, as opposed to the adult offender, are aimed at his/her whole life rather than at specific problematic or criminal acts. To be corrected, the causes of the crime are sought after in the individual’s whole life history, including his or her upbringing (or supposed lack thereof) and individual psychology (Foucault, 1977). Foucault’s distinction between the interventions for the youth delinquent and the adult offender may still be seen as quite relevant, and, if anything, the interventions for adults have become more like those for youth—concentrating on more aspects of the offender’s life history, and specifically involving an increased in-depth focus on the offender’s psychology or inner life (see, for example, Fox, 2001; Pettersson, 2003).

FORCED TREATMENT OF YOUTH IN SWEDEN TODAY

Every year, about 1,000 children and youths are placed in forced treatment in Sweden (Dahlström, 2013). The majority are boys or young men. For example, in 2012, 804 out of 1097 detained youths were male (Dahlström, 2013). There are twenty-five detention homes in Sweden at present. These are run by the Swedish National Board for Institutional Care (SiS; Sw: Statens

institutionsstyrelse), a national board that organizes forced care and treatment

for youth with serious psychosocial problems, drug abuse and criminal problems. Their treatment of youth is regulated under three laws: the Care of Young Persons Act (LVU; Sw: Lag med särskilda bestämmelser om vård av

unga; Lag 1990[52]), which stipulates that youth with serious psychosocial

problems can be detained for forced care; the Social Service Act (SoL; Sw:

Socialtjänstlagen, 2001, p. 453), which involves voluntary care; and the

Secure Youth Care Act (LSU; Sw: Lag om verkställighet av sluten ungdomsvård; Lag 1998[603]), which stipulates that youths aged between fifteen and seventeen who commit serious crimes can be sentenced in a court of law to closed treatment for youth in the form of a fixed sentence (maximum 4 years) (Statens institutionsstyrelse, 2013a). The detention home chosen as a research site only administered forced care under LVU1_{rather than LSU.}

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This means that the dilemma of care vs. control is especially relevant as the duration of detention is not fixed, as opposed to that of LSU, where the detention period is based on the severity of the crime committed.

In accordance with LVU, a youth can be detained for various reasons that can be divided into two main categories: (i) for “living a destructive life with, for example, drug abuse or criminality,” or (ii) for cases where the youth’s guardians “cannot provide the support he or she needs to have a good upbringing” (Statens institutionsstyrelse, 2013b, my translation). Most cases involve the first of these two categories. SiS is responsible both for the assessment of the youth’s treatment needs and for providing the treatment for them. On its website, SiS emphasizes that it uses treatment methods based on scientific evidence, such as ART (Aggression Replacement Training) and CBT (Cognitive-Behavioral Theory). While there is some evidence that these methods might affect recidivism (see, for example, Andreassen, 2003), very little is known about what working with these methods actually entails in practice. This study, therefore, investigates the actual practices of staff members and youths in their everyday lives at a detention home, with a specific focus on issues concerning identity work in people-changing practices.

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Chapter 2 TOTAL

INSTITUTIONS

AND

SUBJECTIVITY

This study centers on identity and problematizes it in several ways. It builds on a notion of identity that could broadly be called social constructionist and is radically different from perspectives traditionally drawn upon within psychology. Many traditional essentialist theories of identity cast it as some type of quality or collection of qualities that make up an abstract core of the individual, which governs human action (e.g. Erikson, 1993; Marcia, 1993). This type of understanding of identity leads to questions such as which identity individuals possess, how they differ from one another or how identities correlate with different types of behavior (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006).

The notion of some kind of core self, or true self, found within individuals can be understood as a discourse in itself. It is through this notion that we understand our desires and life choices (Rose, 1998), and it is this

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notion that manifests itself, for example, through encouragements to be ourselves, to be “self-reliant,” or to build self-esteem (Gubrium & Holstein, 2001). In contrast, I have here adopted a discursive perspective on identity as exterior rather than interior, and as performative, dynamic, and constantly in flux. Following a discursive turn in the social sciences,

identity has been relocated: from the ‘private’ realms of cognition and experience, to the ‘public’ realms of discourse and other semiotic systems of meaning-making. Many commentators therefore argue that rather than being reflected in discourse, identity is actively, ongoingly and dynamically constituted in discourse (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006, p. 4).

One important aspect that needs highlighting here is that, with this perspective, there is no way of penetrating discourse to find a hidden, truer self or an inner core. There are several terms used for identity in this thesis (identity, subject position, and subjectivity), which stem from different theoretical traditions; these are used interchangeably, but identity is broadly here understood as “who people are to each other” (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006, p. 6). In this chapter, I will elaborate further on the specifics of discursive notions of identity (production), focusing on the emergent and changing nature of identity. However, I will begin by discussing total institutions as a specific site for identity construction.

TOTAL INSTITUTIONS, DISCIPLINE, AND SUBJECTIVITY

Residential treatment for troublesome youth may be understood as something delivered in a type of total institution (Goffman, 1961). In the 1960s and 70s, both Foucault (1977) and Goffman (1961) published highly influential treatises on these types of institutions. However, their analyses take different starting points: Goffman’s (1961) in the interactions taking place inside the institution, whereas Foucault (1977) takes his starting point in an “archeological” investigation of the history of punishment. Both document broadly how individuals are constructed within total institutions. In line with Hacking (2004; and others, for example, Clegg, Courpasson, & Phillips, 2006; Kivett & Warren, 2002; Staples & Decker, 2010), I argue that the perspectives these two scholars can be seen to represent are

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complementary starting points for an analysis of institutional practices and identities. After a brief introduction to Goffman’s notion of total institutions, I will discuss the work of Foucault and how it has influenced a critical psychology, and I will then return to explore what interaction-focused micro-sociological perspectives bring to an analysis of institutional practices and identities.

Total institutions and discipline

In Asylums, Goffman (1961) conducts an ethnographic exploration of total institutions, based primarily on fieldwork carried out at the mental hospital St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. Goffman specifically aimed to explore the world of the hospital inmates, searching to understand how their world was subjectively experienced by them and, in turn, how their lives became rational and meaningful to them. He, therefore, turned his gaze to the actual everyday lives and practices of people in the hospital.

In Asylums, he describes total institutions as those that separate categories of people and cut them off from wider society. They surround the inmates, subsuming their lives completely, implying that most, or all, aspects of the confined peoples’ lives are conducted in the same place, under one authority, and usually in the presence of many others. Further, the activities of the institutionalized are minutely scheduled and rationalized as part of a plan to fulfill the aims of the institution (Goffman, 1961, p. 6). Because all parts of inmates’ lives are so tightly regulated and controlled, there is always an imminent risk of sanctions or punishments for inmates.

In a total institution, minute segments of a person’s line of activity may be subjected to regulations and judgments by staff; the inmate’s life is penetrated by constant sanctioning interaction from above [. . .] Each specification robs the individual of an opportunity to balance his needs and objectives in a personally efficient way and opens up his line of action to sanctions. The autonomy of the act itself is violated. (Goffman, 1961, p. 38) Total institutions, with their restriction of freedom and privacy for inmates, are understood as dramatically impacting identity reconstruction. The total institution is a people-changing one in that through different kinds of

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mortification processes, it strips away the inmates’ prior selves, their individuality, and their sense of personal agency by this strict monitoring and review of inmates’ daily activities, scheduling and controlling these thoroughly.

Total institutions also clearly delineate between staff and inmates. In his discussion of asylums, Goffman argued that the staff members bestow an overarching identity on the inmates that allows them to simultaneously control inmates and defend their own actions while cementing the institution and its purpose. The fact that the inmates have been admitted into the mental hospital means that normality has been redefined for them since from then on, abnormality is expected and virtually all inmate conduct can be seen as evidence of mental disorder. Mental hospitals are dedicated to provide care for those understood as unable to be responsible for their own actions, but at the same time the hospital staff demand that inmates assume moral responsibility for their actions: abnormal conduct is expected since that is what got them admitted in the first place; it is what is considered normal of inmates, yet they are penalized for abnormal conduct in the sense of breaking hospital rules (Burns, 1991). This leads to the staff’s authority becoming complete domination.

However, Goffman also discussed ways that inmates could defy the system by, for example, what he calls “make-do’s” (1961, p. 207), through which inmates could modify their life conditions by using artifacts in non-intended ways, for instance, using newspapers to construct pillows. Other acts of “working the system” (1961, p. 210) involve small acts of not complying with the order, for example, by finding ways of making food more enjoyable by sneaking in seasonings or combining foods in non-intended ways.

Goffman explicitly investigated how individuals were affected by the institution—he specifically discussed how institutions impose an identity on their subjects, how organizations generate assumptions about identity through the activities they expect inmates to engage in, and that “to engage in a particular activity in the prescribed spirit is to accept being a particular kind of person who dwells in a particular kind of world” (Goffman, 1961, p. 186).

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However, it should be emphasized that his focus is on social action as making up the social world and identities rather than on the structure of the institution (Burns, 1991).

Foucault’s investigation of total institutions takes a different approach—a historical one. In his classic work Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977), he examined disciplinary power and documented changes in the design of prisons and the Western penal system, from brutal physical torture to surveillance. While the abolishment of corporal punishment has been celebrated by humanists, Foucault paradoxically argued that in actual fact a more efficient disciplining power had been created. He outlined this disciplinary mode of power, which worked through surveillance and a calculated structuring of time and space. Eventually subjects come to internalize norms and discipline themselves.

Foucault specifies three processes involved in discipline: (i) hierarchical surveillance, which entails a scrutinizing gaze from the authority, and generates knowledge of humans; (ii) normalizing judgment, the principle of continuous assessment of conduct in relation to standards; and (iii) examination, which involves the combination of the previous two, applying a normalizing gaze in order to classify and punish (Foucault, 1977).

The goal of discipline is to create “docile bodies” (Foucault, 1977), obedient individuals who are both compliant and useful, and who have been molded and transformed into docility through disciplinary techniques such as identical uniforms, the separating and classifying of inmates, and even physical punishments and humiliations. Importantly, discipline concerns a type of control internalized by the individual—a control aimed at the soul rather than the body (Foucault, 1977). While disciplinary regimes were developed in a prison setting, they have spread throughout society and can be found in other institutions such as workplaces and schools.

In prisons, the internalization of norms is initially caused by the individuals knowing that they are always being watched. Foucault argues that the application of a series of micro-penalties when individuals overstep boundaries is one of the techniques used. Individuals regulate their behavior

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as desired for fear of not living up to the norm rather than to avoid punishment (Mills, 2003).

As an illustrative example, Foucault draws on the prison structure developed by Jeremy Bentham—the Panopticon. In brief, the panopticon consisted of an observational tower in the middle of a circular building with small individual cells for prisoners. From the tower, a prison guard could observe prisoners at all times, but the prisoners could not see the guard and could therefore not know if and when they were being watched, only that they could be seen at all times. The effect was that the inmates would assume the prison guard’s gaze, thus becoming transformed into self-monitoring subjects. The example of the panopticon thereby illustrates disciplinary power, omnipresent but yet invisible, and how control here is aimed at the soul rather than the body. The soul becomes the body’s prison guard and the individual a self-monitoring subject (Foucault, 1977).

Discourse, power, and subjectivity

A radical notion presented by Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1977), and further developed in his later writings, is thus that the “human subject is an effect of power” (Brinkman, 2005, p. 777). Power cannot be understood as something that can be intentionally and freely exercised by individuals for specific interests or purposes. Because individuals are always already intertwined in power relations, being a subject that has some kind of interest or agenda only exists through power relations.

In this Foucauldian perspective (1978, 1982), power is understood as diffused throughout social relations, rather than as imposed from the top down. Power is not strictly repressive of subjectivities, even in a total institution such as a detention home; rather, it is productive in that it produces new practices and subjectivities (Foucault, 1978). Moreover, power is inseparable from resistance, and although the setting of the detention home is one of great inequity and explicit hierarchical relations, these are not fixed but are instead under constant negotiation (Bosworth and Carrabine, 2001). Further, as Foucault has famously written: “Where there is power there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is

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never in a position of exteriority in relation to power” (Foucault, 1978, p. 95).

Foucault’s notion of discourse is intimately connected to his analysis of power and resistance, and, furthermore, to knowledge and truth. Discourse is understood as a system of representations—a system that provides a language for speaking about some particular topic at a specific moment in time. Discourse produces knowledge through the use of language since: “[i]t governs the way a topic can be meaningfully talked about and reasoned about. It also influences how ideas are put into practice and used to regulate the conduct of others” (Hall, 1997, p. 44). Furthermore, all social practices can be understood as having a discursive aspect since all practices require meaning, and meaning is what guides our conduct. This crucially involves a notion of discourse that not only encompasses language but also practices, in an attempt to overcome the language—practice dichotomy (Hall, 1997).

This discursive perspective involves an interest in the production of knowledge and meaning. In Foucault’s view, objects can only have meaning within discourse (Foucault, 1972). This means that it is discourse that produces knowledge. This also involves truth and knowledge being bound to historical context, and thus varying with time and space. One of Foucault’s famous examples is that of how “the homosexual” as a kind of social subject was produced through discourse in the nineteenth century. Even though homosexual actions may have existed before then, those acts were not meaningful in the sense of implying a homosexual identity until after then (Foucault, 1978).

Discourses, however, are always in conflict with other discourses, which is why power is a key element in discussions of discourses—how discourses relate to power and authority to reveal how certain discourses come to dominate over others (Mills, 2004). The relationship between discourse and power is, nevertheless, not a simple one. Foucault wrote:

[D]iscourses are not once and for all subservient to power or raised up against it, any more than silences are. We must make allowances for the complex and unstable process whereby discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling block, a point of

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resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy. Discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines it and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes possible to thwart it. (Foucault, 1978, p. 100– 101)

Neoliberal rationalities and the ethical subject

The early work of Foucault (1977) on discipline in correctional institutions, which highlights the production of obedient individuals, transformed and improved through the application of social control, has been criticized for under-analyzing the individual. His later works (1982, 1991) emphasized strategic uses of language as a means of self-governing and also how individuals can be conceptualized as active and rational agents who partake in their own governing rather than as passive victims or objects of power (Foucault, 1982). Rather than acting on the individuals’ bodies, this power incites introspection and self-monitoring (Garland, 1997), that is, it aims at self-control rather than obedience.

This could be understood as an instance of neoliberal (or “advanced liberal”; Rose, 1999b) rationalities, where governing involves the shaping of subjectivities aligned with governmental aims, using freedom as a resource. Individuals are not forced into conformity; rather, they are expected to willingly work on their own selves, internalize societal norms, and behave accordingly, in brief, to become ethical human beings (Foucault, 1991, 1997). Becoming ethical is largely about acting ethically. To do this, individuals are offered self-technologies (a historical example being confession) that can be used to work on and improve their bodies and souls in order to transform themselves into ethical subjects (Foucault, 1997). But what is seen as ethical varies across cultures and time, as do the self-technologies.

Within correctional institutions, the ethical subject has largely become someone responsible and enterprising, that is, involved in his or her own rehabilitation through self-governing (Garland, 1997; Rose, 2000). These institutions are designed to produce not compliant but self-monitoring subjects who willingly engage in introspection (Garland, 1997).

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A crucial point is that this self-monitoring subject is constituted through social scientific disciplines, for example, psychology, specifically through a strategic use of (often scientific) language (Brinkman, 2005; Fox, 1999). It is the expert status of disciplines such as psychology that makes individuals want to engage in introspection and treat themselves as subjects to be reformed (Garland, 1997).

This means that people are constituted and reconstituted, or transformed, through language (Fox, 1999). This can happen through, for example, the act of confessing, which is required as part of certain rehabilitative programs, and has been highlighted by Foucault (1978), and further investigated by, for instance, Rose (1998, 1999a, 1999b). Rose (1999a) has documented how psychology as a discipline has become part of Western governmental practices in that it emphasizes ethics as involving reflection and

self-regulation, and specifically that introspection must be combined with

confession using specific vocabularies and drawing on certain explanatory codes from authority sources.

The expert status of psychology has become infused into existing systems of authority. Through the use of psychology and psychological terminology, staff with some authority in various settings (for example, army officers, prison guards, or staff administering forced treatment) can “accumulate a kind of ethical basis”—authority can be exercised through the authority’s psychological knowledge of its subjects (Rose, 1998, p. 63). But here authority is played out, not in the form of demands and control, but through “improving the capacity of individuals to exercise authority over themselves [. . .] to understand their own actions and to regulate their own conduct” (Rose, 1998, p. 63).

“Soft power” in penal practices and forced treatment

Within forced treatment for youth, this can be seen, for example, in the application of rehabilitation programs that stress self-care and self-regulation. At present, many such programs are based on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT; cf. Gray, 2009; Kemshall, 2002; Muncie, 2006). In these types of programs, coercive methods are avoided; instead, they aim to influence the

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offenders’ thought patterns by draping the offenders in a particular psychological language, and, thereby, transforming the offenders into active, responsible citizens (Cox, 2011; Fox, 1999).

There are, however, also challenges to neoliberal governing, for example, that of creating a sense of autonomy without abandoning societal control of social life (Muncie, 2006). Within the forced treatment of youth, this problem has, for instance, been observed by Cox (2011) as a dilemma of producing free and responsible individuals in a highly controlled environment. In her study of behavior modification programs for young people in secure residential facilities in the United States, she found that they were simultaneously urged to exercise self-regulation and enact responsibility as well as total submissiveness to authority.

Crewe (2011), drawing on interview data from two extensive prison studies, discusses neoliberal governing through the notion of “soft power.” One aspect of this type of power, he argues, is seen in the increased use of indefinite sentences, something employed within the forced rehabilitation of delinquent youth, and among adult prisoners as well. The softening of penal power does not mean that the pains of imprisonment have been reduced. Crewe documents the pains of uncertainty and indeterminacy, involving stress and anxiety caused by the uncertain future for individual prisoners (for similar observations in a Swedish context, namely, youth homes, see Levin, 1998). He highlights the difficulty for prisoners to know when the “prison’s coercive potential,” which is always “coiled in the background,” might be activated (Crewe, 2011, p. 514).

The pains of self-government follow from that control is relocated from the authorities to the inmates. The prisoner is given greater autonomy but also increased responsibility for his own rehabilitation, leading to the prisoner being unable to submit to authority (Crewe, 2011). Crewe (2011, p. 522) argues that while today’s prisons are generally less authoritarian, power is “all-encompassing and invasive, in that it promotes the self-regulation of all aspects of conduct, addressing both the psyche and the body” (Crewe, 2011, p. 522). For the prisoners, participating in rehabilitative programs is voluntary, but not participating has significant consequences in that the

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prisoner’s release date may be postponed indefinitely, that is, if the prisoners do not submit to institutional demands, for example, by not recognizing that the prescribed rehabilitation is in their own “best interests,” then the prison will resort to punishment and constraint (Crewe, 2009).

RETHINKING THE SUBJECT IN PSYCHOLOGY

The linguistic turn in psychology has gained inspiration from several disciplines, building, for example, on Wittgenstein’s philosophy, Austin’s speech act theory, and Foucault’s historical studies of discursive practice, leading to a change of focus from the individual and his or her inner life to language as performance and its productive potential (cf. Henriques, Hollway, Urwin, Venn, & Walkerdine, 1984; Wetherell, Taylor, & Yates, 2001). In the 1970s and 80s, social psychologists began to formulate a critique of cognitivism and humanism. Discussing these in depth is outside the scope of this dissertation, but in simplified terms, the critique regarded, for example, cognitivist notions of the individual as a unitary, rational, intentional human being (see, for example, Henriques et al., 1984; Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Humanism is critiqued, for instance, for placing the human being as the origin of meaning. This involves a rejection of methodologies that attempt to document meanings that exist inside individuals’ minds, such as cognitions or emotions (Parker, 2013). Further assumptions that are critiqued include the notion of a real world that is discoverable and describable through language, and the notion that language can be used for expressing an essential inner-self (Hepburn, 2003). Instead, a new understanding of subjectivity is formulated, one that dissolves the individual–society dichotomy, a traditional psychological notion of the individual as a rational being that is clearly separated from the surrounding society (Henriques et al., 1984).

Foucault’s notions on discourse, power, and knowledge have been very influential (along with other poststructuralist concepts, which fall outside the scope of this dissertation to discuss), including that language is productive rather than reflective. This involves the radical notion of decentralized subjectivity: the individual is not understood as unitary, rational, and

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separated from the surroundings, but intrinsically tied to them and made up of them in the sense that discourses construct the individual in different ways. Discursive practices provide subject positions: “[. . .] in this view, the subject is composed of, or exists as, a set of multiple and contradictory positionings or subjectivities” (Henriques et al., 1984, p. 204). Psychology and other discursive practices make positions available for subjects to take up. It is through these positionings that the subject is constructed and what causes subjectivity to be dynamic and multiple (Henriques et al., 1984, p. 3).

Drawing on the Foucauldian notion that power and knowledge are interconnected, and that knowledge causes transformation, scholars have problematized the profound impact psychology as a discipline has had on humans and more specifically on how individuals think and feel, that is, it has impacted human subjectivity itself (Brinkman, 2005; Rose, 1998). Psychology and other human sciences have provided society with technologies for subjectivity construction, i.e., concepts and categories provided by psychology have gradually been adopted in humans’ thinking about themselves. They have become part of our self-reflexivity. Furthermore, humans have become increasingly dependent on psychological technologies, for example, psychotherapy or psychological tests (Brinkman, 2005, p. 769).

The core issue is that these ways of thinking about oneself that psychology has provided are not simply “passive representations of human subjects,” but they also have an effect on those very subjects; for this reason, psychology can be understood as “the business of ‘making up people’” (Brinkman, 2005, p. 770). Further, the objects studied within psychology, for example, cognition, emotions, or anxiety, cannot be understood as “naturally existing” since they are only meaningful in discourse, that is, through certain descriptions in specific discursive contexts (Brinkman, 2005). It is because people interact with their descriptions and categories that we have what can be called the “looping effect of human kinds” (Hacking, 1995).

Hacking has problematized the looping effect of classifying human beings, which implies that social categorizations are constantly undergoing transformation since humans change their behavior when having gained

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knowledge of them—when people are classified, they change, and this in turn, causes the classifications themselves to have to be altered. Therefore, the classification, or categorization, of people has real effects on people in that it changes them, and these changes in people tangibly affect the classifications or categorizations themselves (Hacking, 2004). This also indicates that when new social categorizations (or descriptions) arise, new options for comportment become opened up (and other closed), and new descriptions lead to new actions (Hacking, 1995). This further highlights that the understanding of (social-) psychological concepts must always be placed within the practices and cultures where they are found, that is, they are only intelligible within a discursive context (Hacking, 1995). For instance, the specifics of youth delinquency are only understandable in certain contemporary Western contexts.

Crewe (2011) has shed light on how psychological practices and language have powerful effects on prison inmates serving indefinite sentences. The psychological assessments and categorizations applied have a real influence in determining both the prisoners’ future and their present lives in confinement, depriving them of control over their personal identity. The assessment systems require that prisoners fit their life stories into the categories which are useful and manageable for psychological assessments. This means that complex identities are molded into abstract units required by the system. The prisoners’ previous identities are overwritten in the process as the categories provided do not capture the ambiguities of identities, or take social context into consideration. Instead, personal histories and actions are given a “master-label” that provides an explanation, for example, “impulsivity problems” or “anti-social personality” (Crewe, 2011, p. 515).

Further (see, for example, Fox, 1999, 2001), psychological discourse is particularly powerful for constructing truth, perhaps especially within total institutions such as prisons. This is because those prisoners who do not adopt the discourse, including their given identities as individuals with psychological problems (which explain their problematic actions), can be categorized as being “in denial,” which, in turn, confirms the “fact” that they have psychological problems. However, adopting the discourse can also be

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dilemmatic—if a prisoner adopts the discourse too enthusiastically, he or she may risk being suspected of not being genuine, but rather trying to please others (Crewe, 2011; Lacombe, 2008).

MICRO PERSPECTIVES ON IDENTITY: IDENTITY AS ACTION AND ACCOMPLISHMENT

In a study of subjectivity and total institutions, Foucault’s theories thus have much to offer, especially to illuminate how individuals are constituted as subjects through discourse in relation to power and knowledge. However, his theories imparted little information on how subjectification and power happen in practice (Hacking, 2004), even if his later writings explored a related issue on his reasoning about technologies of the self (Foucault, 1997). Insights into this can instead be gained from other research traditions focusing on the study of social interaction. Hacking (2004) proposes a synthesis of Foucault and Goffman. Both their works are of special importance to this study since both authors have written seminal work on prisons and other total institutions. As in much of Foucault’s work, Goffman was also interested in deviation and deviance (Goffman, 1963). Furthermore, Goffman’s interactional perspective reveals how discourse becomes a part of people’s everyday lives; it involved a study of people’s face-to-face interactions in institutional settings, and specifically how norms both affect, and are affected by, those interactions (Goffman, 1961). He made early and important contributions to the study of social interaction by treating it as social organization in its own right, and as something connected to personal identity (or in Goffmanian terms: face) as well as to social institutions on a macro level (Heritage, 2001).

However, in this study, Goffman is, from this perspective, mainly relevant for his contributions to conversation analysis (CA) and, consequentially, discursive psychology (see, for instance, Goodwin and Heritage, 1990; for a critical discussion of Goffman’s contribution to CA and for a critique of his perspective, see Schegloff, 1988). These are perspectives that study social reality from the “bottom up,” starting in everyday interaction (Miller & Fox, 2004, p. 36).

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Discursive psychology: identity in interaction

Discursive psychology (DP; Edwards & Potter, 1992) has its roots in several traditions, but draws largely on ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, 1967) and CA (Sacks, 1992) in its challenging of mainstream psychology. DP rejects the notion of language as a gateway to peoples’ inner lives, or mental processes, and generally understands psychological states, such as emotions, feelings, identity, as performed through language, rather than as something that happens inside people, and which we could gain an understanding of through language alone. Therefore, DP “studies how common-sense psychological concepts are deployed in, oriented to and handled in the talk and texts that make up social life” (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006, p. 40). This involves a study of how reality is constructed through discourse, rather than represented by it (Potter, 1996). Here discourse is understood as action oriented in that it accomplishes things in interaction. Rather than understanding, for example, people’s descriptions of the world as either true or false accounts of it, discursive psychologists analyze descriptions as social action, pointing out that all accounts construct versions of reality, and the task of analysts is to shed light on what people accomplish with their accounts (Wetherell, 2001). DP also points to discourse being situated: it must be analyzed in its situated context (Aronsson, 1998). Meaning is constructed in its immediate context in interaction, and, further, it is a joint production between participants in the interaction (Wetherell, 2001).

Another basic premise of DP is that discourse is simultaneously constructed and constructive (Billig, 1991). This implies that when people talk, they use already existing categories and common-sense ideas available to them (cf. Hacking, 2004) while constructing the social world by using descriptions and accounts of it (Wetherell, 2001). To the study of identities, DP (often drawing on membership categorization analysis; Sacks, 1992) brings the possibility of exploring identities in interaction (Antaki & Widdicombe, 1998a; Aronsson, 1998). Such work concerns how identities are “claimed, resisted and otherwise put to use in interaction” (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006, p. 40).

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In this study, I especially draw on insights from a specific strand of DP that is relevant to the study of identity, a strand sometimes called critical discourse psychology (Wetherell, 1998; Wetherell & Edley, 1999), but which could broadly be said to advocate a combination of Foucauldian/poststructuralist and micro-sociological work on social interaction. This approach espouses both a “CA-inspired attention to conversational detail [and] wider macrostructures and cultural-historical contexts” (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006, p. 41). One way of achieving this combination is through positioning theory. Subject positioning and ideological dilemmas

One way of conceptualizing “the discursive production of a diversity of selves” is through the notion of subject position or positioning (Davies & Harré, 1990, p. 47). Discursive practices are productive in the sense that they make subject positions available for individuals to take up. Subject positions are constantly under negotiation, which implies that who an individual is, is constantly constituted and reconstituted through the different discursive practices he/she participates in (Davies & Harré, 1990, p. 46). Positioning is here understood as

the discursive process whereby selves are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines. There can be interactive positioning in which what one person says positions another. And there can be reflexive positioning in which one positions oneself. However, it would be a mistake to assume that, in either case, positioning is necessarily intentional. (Davies & Harré, 1990, p. 48)

Positioning theory may therefore be understood as illuminating how social interaction is crucial to identity work. It is in language that people both construct themselves in particular ways and are constructed by others, and it is in language that they negotiate these subject positions (Phoenix, Frosh, & Pattman, 2003). Further, positioning theory is useful in that it connects wider discourses or ideologies with the occasioned and situated nature of identities in interaction, and acknowledges that people are both products of, as well as producers of, discourse (Edley, 2001; Wetherell, 1998).

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The subject is understood as decentered and as someone who often assumes contradictory subject positions (Wetherell, 1998). To make sense of our actions, however, we must either resolve or ignore contradictions we are aware of. Producing a coherent story of ourselves is necessary, and will be insisted on by others if we do not (Davies & Harré, 1990). Society demands a non-contradictory subject. The assumption that “people are unique, self-contained motivational and cognitive universes” may be understood as an “Enlightenment myth” building on a tradition that Western people are largely invested in, one where they like to be understood as “someone in particular,” something which may lead to discomfort if contradictions in their identity are exposed (Edley, 2001, p. 195). The notion of the decentered subject made up of varying and sometimes contradictory subject positions may be further elaborated through the concept of ideological dilemmas, which was first introduced by Michel Billig and colleagues, and involves a critical perspective on ideology and thinking (Billig, Condor, Edwards, Gane, Middleton, & Radley, 1988).

Here the notion of ideology as a coherent, unified system of thought is problematized as well as the tendency to understand social actors as passive recipients of ideology. The problematization of ideology highlights the fact that ideology is necessarily made up of contrary themes, and it emphasizes the interconnectedness between formal and common-sensical ideologies. In particular, it highlights how ideology is reproduced in common discourse, pointing to the fact that: “[. . .] ideology is not reproduced as a closed system for talking about the world. Instead it is reproduced as an incomplete set of contrary themes, which continually give rise to discussion, argumentation and dilemmas” (Billig et al., 1988, p. 6). Thus, formal ideology does not exist independently of social interaction among people but can be found in commonsensical discourse where dilemmas are used by people in interaction to build arguments. This means that ideology may rather be conceptualized as “the common-sense of the society” (Billig, 1997, p. 48); it is what makes certain habits or beliefs appear natural and others unnatural.

Ideology, or common-sense reasoning, necessarily consists of contrary themes, and it is that which allows thinking to happen in the first place since

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thinking is a dialectic process (Billig, 1997). The themes are sometimes, but not always, explicitly contradictory or paradoxical and thus dilemmatic; it is only when a choice has to be made that the conflicting themes might develop into a full-scale dilemma (Billig et al., 1988).

Billig and colleagues exemplified this in their case studies, which explored tensions within liberal ideology and how these could be found in everyday interaction. For example, dilemmatic values of equality versus authority, which was identified in interaction between a nurse and her colleague of a lower institutional rank. The nurse had been speaking from within a democratic ideology, and the dilemma was exposed when the lower-ranked colleague did not interpret a question from the nurse as a demand. In the following interaction, it became clear that the production of explicit authoritative demands was problematic as the nurse attempted to neutralize her authority while keeping her position as someone in command (Billig et al., 1988). As Billig and colleagues point out, there is no way to solve dilemmas once and for all since they make up the foundation of thinking in the first place. Individuals may attempt to, and succeed in, finding solutions to dilemmas, or at least to “everyday reproduction” of underlying dilemmas, but this will only lead to dilemmas taking another form of expression (Billig et al., 1988, p. 6).

In this study, there are several dilemmas that become relevant in the everyday life and talk at the detention home. For example, that of care vs. control, which may be seen as inherent in the detention home as an institution (as it administers forced care, in many cases, for conduct that slightly older individuals would receive a fixed sentence/punishment for). Several of the dilemmas or paradoxical themes that emerge in this study may be related to neoliberal ideology, these include coercion vs. freedom and authority vs. equality.

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Chapter 3 IDENTITIES

IN

INSTITUTIONAL

SETTINGS

OF

FORCED

TREATMENT

As has been highlighted by, for example, Wästerfors (2009a), research that complicates traditional folk notions of “the problem of (youth) criminality” residing primarily inside the young delinquent is much needed. He points out that what is constant in institutions that detain youth delinquents may rather be the recurring practices than the individuals.

Below I will present a selection of studies that have attempted to get closer to the participants in context, that is, in their daily lives in forced-treatment institutions, and primarily work on young men or boys in such institutions. Subsequently, I will introduce two broad (and somewhat overlapping) research perspectives on identity in institutions: subjectivity research and research on identity in interaction. Since there is very little research on identity and detention homes from the chosen theoretical and methodological perspective, I will also present research from related

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institutional settings. While there is much relevant work on, for example, young masculinities, ethnicity, and violence (Frosh, Phoenix, & Pattman, 2002; Messerschmith, 1993) and the role of language, style, and performativity for these categories (Jonsson, 2007; Milani & Jonsson, 2011), in this study I have not taken gender or ethnicity as a theoretical starting point. Instead, I discuss these categories if and when they explicitly have become relevant in the recordings or observations, and I have accordingly chosen to limit the literary review on ethnicity and gender.

ETHNOGRAPHIES OF YOUTH DETENTION HOMES

Ethnographic studies of youth detention centers (and similar institutions) have shed light on these institutions’ complex and at times dilemmatic practices. In a study of an open-custody facility for delinquent boys in Canada, Gray and Salole (2006) found that despite a general aim of mainly rehabilitation, when investigated at the micro-level, these open-custody facilities proved to also engage in “discipline, punishment, enterprising and reintegrative functions.” Thus, approaches that could broadly be classified as neoliberal were combined with neoconservative ones, and the authors maintain that at the level of situated practices, open custody involves contradictory social control sanctions (2006, p. 677).

From a different perspective, ethnographers like Kivett and Warren (2002) and Wästerfors (2009b, 2011) further complicate the picture of detention homes as total institutions with monolithic control over their inmates, illuminating how power or social control is not fully pervasive, but rather how it emerges as a micro-political and bidirectional phenomenon. Kivett and Warren (2002) document “the micro-politics of trouble” at a detention home in the United States that appears to embody the disciplinary gaze of a total institution, specifically through the use of a behavior modification program: token economy (TE). However, they find that the disciplinary gaze is also averted. Power can thus be seen to be bidirectional as staff members at times decide to look the other way in instances where they

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otherwise could have used TE or other institutional rules to enforce compliance. Social control is thereby micro-political and constructed in “the minute-by-minute decision making of individual staff members” (2002, p. 31).

Wästerfors (2009b, 2011) similarly takes an interactional and micro-political approach to “trouble” or disputes in detention homes for young men in Sweden. By illuminating how interpersonal trouble is neither static nor random, he challenges notions of youth in detention as “programmed troublemakers” (2009b, p. 33): as youths with individual problems that cause them to engage in troublesome actions. Actions are instead understood as contextual rather than individual, and interwoven with the daily affairs of the institution. Trouble, or the reason for it, can thus not be seen as stemming from inside some individuals, but must be viewed as social and contextual. Youth identities

Several ethnographic studies examine how institutions affect or attempt to alter youth identities in various ways. In her analysis of a secure residential facility for young people in the United States, Cox (2011) explicates how the contradictory setting simultaneously attempt to rehabilitate youth using CBT, and punish or discipline them. This involves paradoxical aims for the detained young people in that they are urged to take responsibility for their lives in a setting that gives them virtually no possibility of enacting such responsibility (in Cox’s words, express “self-control”, 2011, p. 604).

In another study of young men in correctional institutions in the United States, Abrams and Hyun (2009) found that the young men struggled to retain a positive self-view in response to the stigmatization of their prior identities caused by the rehabilitation discourses at the institution. Through rehabilitative discourses, the young men were urged to “reexamine their prior selves and envision alternative future identity possibilities” (2009, p. 26). The authors delineate strategies used by the youths in response to these discourses, including negotiation strategies, for example, manipulating rules

Disciplining Freedom